A ceasefire between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian rebels is reportedly falling apart in the eastern town of Debaltseve, where government forces have been forced to flee and abandon the rail hub. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on rebels to allow the Ukrainian troops to leave, for which he said the only choice is to surrender.

"The actions by the Russia-backed separatists in Debaltseve are a clear violation of the ceasefire," said European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

"The EU stands ready to take appropriate action in case the fighting and other negative developments in violation of the Minsk agreements continue." more >>

Jihadists from terror group ISIS have reportedly burned to death 45 people in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, though local police forces have been unable to identify yet who the victims are.

Police chief Col. Qasim al-Obeidi said that he believes some of the victims are members of Iraqi security forces who could have been captured when ISIS took a large part of al-Baghdadi last week, BBC News reported on Tuesday.

Obeidi asked the Iraqi government and the international community for help, noting that a compound that houses the families of security personnel and local officials is under attack. more >>

In the newest edition of its apocalyptic English-language propaganda magazine, the Islamic State terrorist organization refutes the long-standing mantra that Islam is a "religion of peace" and insists that Islam is a "religion of the sword."

Countering the popular opinion that Islam calls for peace among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, an article in the seventh edition of Dabiq magazine states that Allah calls for Islam to be a religion of violence and any Muslim who believes otherwise holds a heretic view.

"There is a slogan repeated continuously by apologetic 'du'at' [callers for Islam] when flirting with the West and that is their statement: 'Islam is the religion of peace,' and they mean pacifism by the word peace," reads the ISIS article, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. more >>

The government of Egypt has warned ISIS that it will not allow the terror group to "cut off the heads of our children" in response to the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has called on the Union Nations to authorize a resolution to allow military aid for Libya in the battle against ISIS.

"We will not allow them to cut off the heads of our children," Sisi declared in a radio speech, according to BBC News.

Libya is caught in widespread turmoil with rival militant groups battling for control, while the internationally recognized government has been forced to abandon the capital of Tripoli and move to Tobruk. more >>

Last week former congressman Frank Wolf released an important new human-rights report on Iraq's religious minorities, aptly entitled "Edge of Extinction." Detailing some of the Islamic terrorists' cruelest practices, particularly with respect to women and children, this documentation should serve as the opening salvo in the long-neglected battle of ideas over Islamic extremism.

Mr. Wolf, who stepped down from his congressional seat last month, just returned from Iraq with the new Christian human-rights group, the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, where he is a distinguished senior fellow. In Kurdistan, less than two miles from the front line, he and his team interviewed Christians and Yazidis persecuted by the Islamic State, banished from their homes, and now huddled with hundreds of thousands like them in abject misery in Iraq's northernmost province.

One Christian woman, whose family could not flee the city of Qaraqosh when the Islamic State invaded on August 6 because her husband is blind, told Wolf, "We could hear 'Allah akbar!' in the streets. 'Christians, go away or we will kill you.' After that they came to our house. 'Convert or we will kill you.'" The next thing she knew, the jihadists had snatched her three-year-old daughter from her lap, and took the baby away. more >>

U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama's recent condemnation of medieval Christian history to exonerate modern Islam is a reminder of how woefully ignorant (or intentionally deceptive) a good many people in the West are concerning the true history of Christian Europe and Islam.

The problem is that those Islamwho condemn things like the Crusades—including "mainstream" academics, journalists, moviemakers, and politicians—do so without mention of historical context. Worse, they imply "we" already know the context: evil popes and greedy knights exploiting Christianity to seize Muslim lands and wealth. Or as Karen Armstrong put it, "the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam."

The true story of Christendom and Islam is the antithesis of such claims. Consider some facts for a moment: more >>